Holter flies to new heights on ‘Aviary’
As Julia Holter’s album “Aviary” winds down, she offers a mesmerizing line that has stuck with me since: “Be a good listener, though.”
The California-based musician says the line “is definitely about myself. A letter to myself. I’m always trying to be a better listener.”
But it’s easy to hear it as a plea for better communication in general. That we spend at least as much time listening as talking. That said, from a purely creative standpoint, Holter has offered a lot to listen to with her latest album. “Aviary” spreads its wings across nearly 90 minutes of music that in its entirety avoids pop tropes. There are tips to Sappho and Pushkin, bits in French, Occitan (a little-known Romance language) and some ancient tongues. She makes a lyrical reference to, and also offers her take on, the medieval musical practice of hocketing.
“Aviary” would feel like a lecture were Holter’s presentation of its heady concepts not so enveloping. The album begs for repeat plays, on which its many little parts layered into a gorgeous, almost orchestral-sounding experimental folk music can reveal themselves over time. It rewards the good listener. The album was met with unanimously positive reviews upon its release last fall. Holter is out touring the record now, coming Tuesday to White Oak Music Hall.
On the one hand, the album’s title could be heard to reference the densely constructed music: that Holter and her collaborators have made a lush work with all sorts of sounds.
“I have trouble with titles and usually come up with them last,” she says.
But a few lines by poet Etel Adnan stuck with her, not so much for their account of sonics but the way they made Holter think about memory. “It felt perfect to me, I guess because birds in general seem to be in my thoughts a lot. And this record, it was so focused on medieval stuff. And birds are portrayed in the margins of medieval manuscripts. They’re a symbol of memory, which was something that I thought connected to these songs.”
Holter says the 15 compositions came together without much of a unifying concept at first.
“Each song had a different start,” she says. “I’d sit and play music on a synth and singing, without any extramusical ideas in mind. ‘Everyday Is an Emergency’ started as that phrase. ‘Another Dream’ was a purely improvisational moment; that was very stream-of-consciousness. ‘Chaitius’ was the point at which I started to realize a record was happening.”
That song includes some phrases borrowed from Bernart de Ventadorn. If the poet and troubadour’s name doesn’t ring a bell, it’s because he wrote in the 12th century.
“That song, I had these specific intentions,” Holter says. “I wanted to work with hocketing music, to play with language and combine different languages. So the sentences are more about sound than something you’d decipher. They do mean things. But sonically I wanted it to feel a little like babble.”
Communication is another theme that runs through the record. “Aviary” is void of politics. But it still represents a point of view from its author, who is trying to make sense of our times and take an accounting of her role in our world.
On “Words I Heard,” she sings about “frequent missile talk/ slurping on the words I heard from the wretched zone.”
“It’s hard to think about sometimes. I mean, I can’t believe what is going on,” Holter says. “And it seems impossible to get out of it. To communicate with someone, anyone, who’s full of hate and has no interest in other perspectives. But a lot of ‘Aviary’ is also self-questioning. About my own morality and my own issues. So there is a feeling there of being overwhelmed. Of considering dark things, both political and not — a more general darkness.”